Development of electrodes in polymeric flexible substrates for organic biosensors

• Autor(a) principal: Cruz, Hugo Cardoso da
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/16270
• topic: Engenharia física; Biossensores; Odor - Detectores; Condutores orgânicos

The increase of organic electronics and consequently, the development of sensors based on organic polymers have attracted a lot of attention of the scientific community. Intrigued by these multifunctional, easily processed and low cost materials, it has started to develop odour biosensors for different applications, including medical field and the detection of various diseases. The present work, is focused in the scaling-up of a devoted laboratory approach, in particular concerning the development of organic odour biosensors (electronic nose concept) based on a conductive polymer (PEDOT:PSS) in a pre-industrial approach and produced by means of electronic printing techniques, such as screen printing and slot die. New carbon microelectrodes with different geometrical parameters were designed and processed by the screen printing technique. Further, the slot die technique was applied in order to print the PEDOT:PSS film over the microelectrodes. After the fabrication process, the sensors were morphologically characterized by optical microscopy, atomic force microscopy, profilometry and electrically identified by the two points probe method. The sensors were tested with the use of different analytes with the main focus on two gynaecological analytes. The resistive and capacitive electrical sensor responses for the analytes were analysed and discussed in depth. Important results were obtained with regard to the influence of the geometrical parameters of the carbon microelectrodes and also to the polymer thickness. Finally, the tests on the sensors were also carried out with the use of other analytes which contained blue cheese.